The present invention is directed on deposition of a metalborocarbide-layer on a substrate by means of a pulsed PVD-method. Thereby, it addresses preferably a pulsed cathode sputtering method, whereby the material sputtered off from the cathode is deposited out of the gaseous phase on the substrate as coating material.
Metalborocarbide-materials are applied as base material due to their outstanding mechanical and chemical properties. To do so, different manufacturing methods are known, which are not addressed in details in the following. Nevertheless, these materials are expensive with respect to manufacturing and are problematic with respect to working.
One possible approach is the improvement of components, the base body thereof being of customarily materials as for example of Cermet, Steel, Hardmetal or High-Speed-Steel. Such an improvement may thereby also include a coating with a metalborocarbide-layer. Thereby, one may revert on PVD-method. PVD means in the present context physical vapor deposition and addresses deposition out of the gaseous phase. Schier addresses in the application WO2012/052437 the sputtering PVD-method and especially the HIPIMS method. HIPIMS thereby means High Power Impulse Magnetron Sputtering, which is a sputtering method, in which sputtering from the cathode is performed with the help of a magnetron and with a high current density. Schier addresses sputtering as disadvantageous, because the process gas flow as necessitated is considered to be difficult to control. Beside of this difficulties arise with respect to realise the desired crystalline phase for the coating, as Schier describes with respect to the example of the aluminum oxide.
Therefore, there is described in the WO2012/052437 an arc evaporation method for depositing such layers. In this method an arc is sustained, the incidence spot thereof on the so-called target, which provides for the coating material, migrates whereby target material is evaporated. As target material, a target is used which comprises at least two different metals, whereby at least the metal with the lowest melting temperature of the target is present in a ceramic compound. In this way, the generation of droplets, which is often encountered in arc PVD, shall be suppressed. Nevertheless, this does not completely succeed. If one desires to coat in a substantially droplet-free manner, then at arc PVD-methods customarily laborious filter techniques are necessary, which do significantly reduce the coating rate and make such a technique often un-economical.
Borocarbides of the rear earths are today known as interesting supra conductive materials. In their article “Borocarbide “Thin Films and Tunneling Measurement” which was published in the year 2000 in the frame of NATO workshops in Dresden, Iavarone et al. describe magnetron-sputtering as a method for manufacturing Re—Ni2B2C, whereby Re stands for an element out of the group which is formed by Y,Er,Lu. The sputtering method was applied at approximately 800° C. and diamante-substrates had to be used.
Therefore, it would be desirable to have a method available, which allows to deposit at moderate temperatures and economically layers of a metalborocarbide upon substrates, whereby such layers should contain, at least to a significant part, desired preferably micro- and/or nano-crystalline phases.
Therefore, it is the object of the present invention to provide such a method.